Ground Part 2

Abstract

In 'Ground: I', published in OLR Volume 3 Number 1, Jean-Claude Leben­ sztejn introduces the critique of historico-aesthetic categories which is con­ cluded here. Art history rests on the same faulty system of taxonomy which characterizes classical science. Fauvism, for instance, is identified by a reliance on dating and loosely descriptive adjectives — neither is conclusive and neither can be made to extend to cover graphics or sculpture. A similar lack of rigour and coherence marks the assumption that the name expresses the cohesion of the group. 'A name is proposed and the historian works, in a remarkable variant of the realistic illusion, by unconsciously taking this name for a concept and the concept in turn for an object.' (Swinburne's rejection of the term Pre-Raphaelite points to a similar confusion.) Lebensztejn's task, therefore, is to find precise criteria which can distinguish the production of the Fauves and 'Die Brucke', while at the same time exposing the essentia list and racist presuppositions which sustain the orthodox distinction. The artist must be seen as a producer rather than as a psychological subject and the art object itself must be constituted as 'a formal and systematic (i.e. theoretical) object.'